Desenvolvimento e otimização do processo fermentativo para a produção de vinho branco a partir da uva Itália.

Abstract

With the reduction of vineyards in São Roque, the wine industry of this region has been seeking for alternatives to produce common wine with low cost. In the present work, wine production from Italia grape obtained at the Góes Wine-cellar (São Roque SP) with the wild yeast and the selected yeast (Y-904 Mauriferm from COATEC) was studed. Following a 22 factorial design complemented with a star configuration 44 experiments were carried out in bench scale bioreactors with 1 L working volume, whose fermentation conditions were initial pH values of 2.8, 3.0, 3.3, 3.6 and 3.8 and temperatures of 18, 20, 24, 28 and 30oC, being 22 with and 22 without skin. These experiments permitted to study the influence of initial pH and temperature in the ethanol and glycerol formation during turbulent fermentations in the presence and absence of skin. Besides, the advantages and disadvantages of the selected yeast in comparison to the wild yeasts were also evaluated. The results showed that high ethanol production from the Italia grape variety could be achieved, reaching up to 10 °GL. It was also observed a strong influence of the skin presence during the fermentation, but the wine made in the absence of skin produced colorless white wines with more pleasant flavours than the wines made in presence of skin. Furthermore, was observed that the wild yeast showed higher yield in converting sugar to alcohol than the selected yeast, however the later made higher glycerol concentration than the former. It was also noticed that the optimization results were consistent to the experimental ones. The feasibility of implementing the fermentation in the absence of skin as well as of employing the selected yeast in real production conditions was investigated by perfoming experiments in 1000L vats of Goes Wine-cellar. The results attained were compatible with the ones from the bench scale experiments. However, smaller values for the final ethanol concentration were observed as a consequence of the lack of temperature control, which caused more losses of ethanol due to evaporation. The major contribution of the present work, tested in the lab experiments and confirmed in the fermentations carried out at the Wine-cellar, is the development of a simple method for skin removal prior fermentation, which resulted in an important improvement in the quality of white wine made from Italia grape.